Avoiding the Road Back to Bloodshed

El Salvador, with a population of only 5 million, suffered 75,000 deaths during its decade of civil war. The equivalent in a country the size of the United States would be 3,750,000 dead, an unthinkable catastrophe.

The 1992 peace agreement was brokered by the United Nations. One portion of the agreement was the establishment by the United Nations of a Truth Commission that took testimony--courageous even when it was anonymous--from 2,000 victims of and witnesses to human rights abuses.

As it became apparent that the far greater onus for such abuses was to fall, in the commission’s report, on the government’s security forces, Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani, a member of the Arena party, sought to nullify its effects. Over the weekend, he succeeded.

The Arena-dominated legislative passed a general amnesty that, beyond gutting the commission’s efforts, frees military officers convicted in some of the most publicized slayings and blocks the trials of others. Leftists convicted of political assassinations would also go free.

Amnesties can serve a purpose. Even this one--if it specifically declined to protect persons named in the commission’s report--could help heal Salvador’s nightmarish wounds. As it stands, the amnesty is ripping them wide open.

One commission recommendation was that military and civilian officeholders named as being guilty of serious human rights abuses should leave office immediately and “not have access to public office, or a public role, in El Salvador for at least 10 years.” The blanket amnesty foils this key plan, which would bar, among others, the rebel commander Joaquin Villalobos from public life.

But the proposal still can and should be implemented immediately. There is nothing to bar the Salvadoran legislature from amending the amnesty to exclude those named in the report, including Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce, who resigned as defense minister just before the report named him in the 1989 killings of six priests.

To encourage these exclusions, all future U.S. aid to El Salvador, civilian as well as military, ought to be made contingent on compliance with the commission’s recommendations, as has been proposed by Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.). Anything less is a step on the road back to the Western Hemisphere’s bloodiest conflict of this century.